Fuel nozzles, such as in gas turbine engines, direct pressurized fuel from a manifold to one or more combustion chambers. Fuel nozzles also prepare the fuel for mixing with air prior to combustion. Therefore, the pattern and quantitative parameters of a fuel nozzle spray significantly affect combustion and thus the efficiency of engine performance. It is important to collect spray information to analyze spray parameters of fuel nozzles during a design stage of a new family of fuel nozzles and during the manufacturing process of every production batch of fuel nozzles, in order to ensure that newly designed fuel nozzles meet the requirements of the desired spray parameters for a gas turbine engine, and to be able to implement meaningful quality control of every production batch of fuel nozzles in accordance with the designed spray parameters, within allowed limits.
Fuel nozzle spray patternation technology has been used for quantitative analysis of a spray of a fuel nozzle to determine the quantitative spray parameter, however there is always room for improvement.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide an improved method of computing spray parameters of a fuel nozzle from the patternation thereof.